AI will eliminate many entry-level roles. That could spell trouble for leadership diversity if companies don’t prepare

Hello from the Fortune Global Forum in Abu Dhabi, where leaders like former Prime Minister Tony Blair, billionaire investor Ray Dalio, and CEOs of the world's biggest multinational companies convened this week to discuss some of the most pressing global issues today.

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Renée McGowan, CEO of Marsh McLennan India, Middle East, and Africa, and Taso Du Val, CEO of Toptal, a global freelancing platform for white-collar employees (think software engineers, product managers, and finance experts). Our conversation primarily centered on how the proliferation of AI tools can unlock and scale human potential, allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks.

You can watch the full conversation below, but what I’d like to pull out for raceAhead readers is AI’s impact on junior-level employees and the potential diversity ramifications.

Companies, particularly those in the U.S., have largely operated with an apprenticeship model wherein entry-level talent and interns get their feet wet, so to speak, by taking on grunt work—often routine, repetitive tasks and the very tasks that AI is primed to replace. Here’s where it dovetails into diversity: Much of the recent gains made around racial and ethnic representation are at the early-career stage where the barrier to entry is much lower, and because there's been a considerable uptick in college-educated people of color entering the workforce.

It stands to reason, then, that if AI replaces the bulk of the work that would have historically been relegated to junior-level employees, we could see representation stagnation at the earliest entry points of the candidate pipeline and the upward ripple effects in leadership years later.

McGowan isn’t so sure. In fact, she pushes back on what she calls alarmist statistics about AI eliminating jobs. However, she acknowledges that companies will have to think differently about their entry-level talent and ensure that the work they perform requires high cognitive skills. “No doubt about it, AI will eliminate mundane routine-type tasks,” she told me. But it will also create new jobs and force employers to think smartly and innovatively about their reskilling efforts and how they’re maximizing junior employees as a human capital resource.

“As you’re coming into your early career, what are the skills that you're going to need to learn? And how do we expose you to those skills throughout the organization to map to either the leadership models or the technical models that we need into the future?” she said. “It’s about redeployment and thinking about work differently.”

Still, many of the tasks that are symbolic of entry-level knowledge workers are projected to become automated within the next five years, meaning upskilling and reskilling must take on new urgency as job security becomes increasingly uncertain—and all the more so for people of color. This shift will arguably reduce demand for junior-level positions and, subsequently, fewer job opportunities for recent graduates and young professionals.

For fear of sounding fatalist, the next generation of knowledge workers could struggle to gain the hands-on, real-world experience needed for higher-level roles if AI can perform most entry-level jobs. And as with most things, when America gets a cold, people of color get the flu. As McGowan told Global Forum attendees, it would behoove companies to swiftly create targeted reskilling for junior hires and promote a culture of continuous learning. I'd add one more crucial task to that list: Look at reskilling through an inclusive lens.

Check out more coverage from Fortune’s Global Forum here.

Ruth Umoh
@ruthumohnews
ruth.umoh@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com